You Never Realize
by Utada Kumi
Summary: Rikku never understood the meaning of the sentence: You never realize what you have until you lose it. That is, until now. Story is developed around Paine and Rikku. RikkuxPaine [Warning, brief shoujoai, very brief.]


**You never realized – A Paine & Rikku Fanfic**

**Author: Utada Kumi**

Warning! : This story contains a very slight Yuri/ Shoujo-ai (Girl love.)

Well... actually it's just one little word at the end of the story, so you can deal with that! You got me? Deal with it! Lol.

Disclaimer: The FFX-2 characters belong to Square, not to me. DUH!

You Never Realize

You never realize what you have until you lose it. I had never understood that sentence until that day... that day I lost her. It was about a year ago. We decided to go on a little trip. It was getting dark and we wanted to find a nice stop where we could camp out. Even though we had the Celsius where we could sleep, we still wanted to camp out. Now I wish we hadn't...

"Hey! How about over there?" I asked while pointing in the direction of a wide cliff edge which carried a huge tree.

"Hmm... I don't know... seems pretty risky. Who knows you might turn in the middle of your sleep and fall over the edge." answered Paine with a slight mocking tone in her voice.

I pouted and then replied: "I wasn't saying we should sleep on the edge itself!"

"Yeah I knew that. Come on let's get our camp started." mentioned the silver haired girl as she walked off.

I followed her and for once I was being quiet. When we finally finished setting up our camp, it was getting dark. So Paine lit up a fire camp and I got some marshmallows out and grabbed a point stick which was supposed to be used for the fire.

"Hey Paine, you want some?" I asked as I placed a marshmallow on the end of the stick and placed it over the fire.

She didn't reply.

"Hey! Paine! Do you want any?" I repeated myself but this time in a louder voice.

She turned her head to look at me and then she asked me: "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" I asked back, a little lost.

"Sounded like a rumbling sound." she said.

"Rumbling sound?" I asked.

That's when I heard it too, the sound of rumbling. It seemed to be coming from the west, but then again I wasn't too sure. I thought it was nothing to worry about at the time. Anyway, even if it was thunder in the distance the Celsius was landed near by.

"That? Might be thunder..." I started. "Should we get back to the Celsius?"

"Nah, no need to. It's far away and it's probably going to miss us." replied the silver haired girl.

I did my usual big smile and then looked at my burning marshmallow. I quickly pulled it away from the fire and blew on it until it cooled off and finally ate it.

20 or 30 minutes passed when suddenly the wind started to blow. At first it was only a small breeze so it didn't matter much. I was getting bored so I decided to look at the sky. What I saw surprised me. All in front of us, the sky was normal, all filled with stars, but at the back of us... it was pitch black. I moved next to Paine and tugged at her arm.

Her head turned and she looked at me like if I had just disturbed her during work.

"What is it?" She asked.

"Turn around and look at the sky." I reply as I pointed at the pitch black half of the sky.

"Must be the storm we heard earlier. I guess I was wrong. Let's pick up our things and get back to the Celsius." Paine stated.

I nodded and got up to start picking some things. It was at that moment that the wind picked up. It was blowing hard. It blew at the fire making its flames uncontrollable. Those flames reached my left leg even before I had the time to realize it would. I felt a heavy burning sensation and finally backed off. It hurt a lot.

"Rikku! Are you ok?" Paine asked just realizing I had gotten burned.

I was whelping. She came closer to me to take a look at my wound.

"You didn't get burned too seriously. You'll be fine. But if you don't move it you won't be. This storm is going to be worst than I expected and it seems to be coming fast." She said.

I was about to say something when the rain started pouring and it was pouring heavy. The weird part was the rumbling of the thunder. It still seemed so far away. Like if it didn't move.

"Just great! ... Come on Rikku, let's get out of here. Nevermind our stuff." Paine said as she helped me get up and took hold of my left arm to give me support.

We didn't get a chance to get chance to go to far when the wind got stronger. If it wasn't for my injury we could of walked through it.

"Paine... the wind is too strong." I said, tears still in the corner of my eyes.

Paine looked at me with a face meaning "I knew that!" The next thing I knew she was turning back towards the camp dragging me along with her.

"Wha... What are you planning on doing Why are you going back?" I asked confused.

"You'll see once we get there." She replied in her usual monotone voice.

How could she be so calm in a time like this? As she dragged me along, I realized that Paine's hair was dripping wet and that it was starting to come down on her face. I bet mine was soaked n' wet too. Once we got back to the camp Paine let go of me and went looking around for something.

"What are you looking for? Please don't tell me you came all the way back here just because you forgot something!" I said a bit mad at the situation but more confused than anything else.

Paine didn't answer. She just kept on looking for... whatever she was looking for. Maybe if she just told me what it was I could of helped her search for it. Finally Paine stopped searching and pulled out a climbing rope.

"A climbing rope?..." I started "You actually want to go climbing in a time like this!?" I continued loudly while she was moving towards the tree which I had the 'brilliant' idea to make camp next to.

Paine started tying the rope around the tree's trunk so that the two ends of would be lose but yet it would still be solidly tied to the tree's trunk. I was so confused. I didn't get what she was up to. The rain was probably pouring harder and the wind blowing harder but I didn't care anymore. I couldn't hear the thunder's rumbling in the distance anymore but that was probably because the wind and rain was so loud that I almost couldn't hear myself speak anymore. Well at lease not when I spoke in a low voice.

"Rikku! Get over here!" Paine yelled at me. She was probably yelling so I could hear her.

I stumbled my way towards the tree where she was. Out of nowhere the wind blew so hard that it almost threw me over. Well it would of if it wasn't for Paine's hand that grabbed me just in time and pulled me next to her and the tree. She was holding herself on one of the tree's branch.

"Are you ok?" Paine asked, still speaking louder than usual.

"Yeah, but what's with the wind speed?" I replied in a tone that she could hear me.

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it." She replied.

As she spoke those words she was tying one end of the rope around me.

"Oh so that was your plan!" I said, finally understanding.

"Yeah." She replied.

I don't know how she managed, but she was able to tie me up tightly with only one hand. Her other one was still holding on the branch. Once I was secured she shifted and tried to take hold of the other end of the rope which was flying around.

A cracking sound suddenly rushed to my ears like if it was the only sound around. I just had the time to look up at Paine's face for a second as I saw the branch snap and both her and it went flying away in the windy stormy night.

"Paine!!!!" I cried out, even though I knew it was too late and that she was gone.

Tears went rushing at the side of my face my vision got blurry I look at the blurry other end of the rope flying around in the wind, the same end of the rope that should have been tied around Paine. I cried trough most of the storm until I finally fell asleep. The next day I woke up with Brother's face in front of mine. I wished it was all but a bad nightmare but when I looked around I realized it wasn't.

We search all around to find nothing but Paine's sword.

Since that day I have never forgotten the look on Paine's face just before she went flying of in the darkness. It was a look of extreme fear. Something I had never seen in her face before. Losing her was bad enough, but losing her and just realizing after she was gone that I .... "Loved her"... it was just really upsetting.

Now I understand the sentence : "You never realize what you have until you lose it.

The end

_I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think of this... This is one of my first FFX-2 and one of my rare fanfic. I'm not really much of a writer, I'm more of the artist._


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